The Greenest Building in Vancouver

When the VanDusen Botanical Garden
Association decided it was time for a new visitor centre, in 2000, the
idea that the building should be the greenest in the city—one of the
greenest in the country—did not even make it onto the whiteboard. They
had enough to deal with just raising the facilities to the level of
adequate. “The existing buildings were built in the 1970s,” explains
John Ross, project manager for the Vancouver park board. “They were
small, not very efficient, with single-glazed windows and not much
insulation, so they were expensive to run.” There was also little on
hand for families—mums and dads couldn’t even get a cup of soup for
their kids on a rainy day—and the library and educational program
facilities were inadequate.

The garden, on 22 city-owned hectares
off Oak Street, is managed jointly by the nonprofit VanDusen garden
association and the park board. An early design for a new visitor centre
proved useful for fundraising purposes, and when the partners sent out
an expression of interest for architects, Peter Busby was among the
respondents. “They brought energy and enthusiasm,” recalls Ross of the
Busby Perkins + Will presentation. “They were quite interested in green
buildings. That was an aspect the committee hadn’t considered.”

All
the more surprising, then, that the recently opened $21.9-million
centre should turn out to be a green overachiever. Early on, Busby’s
team decided LEED Platinum just wouldn’t cut it. Instead of merely
shrinking the building’s footprint, they set out to build something
revolutionary. The centre’s water-harvesting roof, which evokes a series
of giant orchid petals, is crowned in part with a glittering array of
solar-thermal tubes. (The building is broadly modelled after a flower.)
Below, a gently curving rammed-earth wall—a massive and sensual
structure that will likely endure for centuries—beckons visitors.

According to a 2005 study, Canadian buildings—in their construction,
operation, and disposal—account for one-third of our nation’s energy,
use 50 percent of its extracted natural resources, create a quarter of
all landfill waste, and cough out 10 percent of all airborne
particulates. Thanks to natural-gas furnaces, Vancouver’s homes,
schools, and offices spew 55 percent of our city’s global warming
pollution—considerably more than our cars. Badly designed or built
buildings can sicken occupants by exposing them to mould, or toxins and
carcinogens like formaldehyde and asbestos. Buildings can bar people
with disabilities, degrade ecosystems, and gradually drain the life and
soul out of those who work within their walls.

The new visitor
centre does none of those things. It harvests rainwater to flush
toilets, transfers the heat of the sun into the floors or stores it in
the earth (offsetting electricity usage), and naturally ventilates
itself in summer by exhausting excess heat through an aluminum cone
built into the pinnacle of the atrium. It treats its own sewage. It
contains plenty of locally sourced materials, and uses nothing from a
“red list” that includes asbestos, mercury, and vinyl.

It was
Busby who suggested pursuing a Living Building Challenge
certification—one of the most stringent green-building standards
anywhere and “a reminder of where we need to be,” says Eden Brukman,
vice-president of the Portland, Oregon–based International Living
Future Institute, which oversees the program.

According to
Brukman, there are about 90 registered Living Building projects across
North America. The list includes schools, homes, and a notable
wastewater reclamation facility in Rhinebeck, New York. “We had a tour
there recently; we had 50 people walking through this water treatment
facility,” she recalls. “There were people so comfortable with the
intent of the space, they were actually crying.”

Much as I love
green buildings (I built one in my front yard), I can be a bit of a
know-it-all when it comes to the standard playbook. Ho-hum, another
heat-recovery ventilator. But my guides on a recent tour—Jim Huffman,
associate principal for Busby, Perkins + Will; and Rebecca McDiarmid,
project manager for Ledcor Construction (the builder)—saved the best for
last.

Stepping carefully over compressor hoses and taut mason lines, we
headed down a dim cinderblock hallway and entered the mechanicals
room—essentially, VanDusen’s utility closet. The cramped space is an
orchestra of expansion tanks, pumps, and manifolds connected via banks
of gleaming copper pipe.

McDiarmid took the lead. “The silver box
is the heat-recovery unit,” she said. “These are giant hot-water and
expansion tanks, those are the pumps for geo-exchange system, this is
the equipment for the black-water treatment. The purple pipe is for the
non-potable water supply from the rainwater tanks.” This is green-geek
heaven.

By integrating energy, waste, water, and ventilation
systems, the pipes, pumps, and boxes around me embody the potential of a
different path. These systems and technologies will one day enable not
just a new kind of building but a truly sustainable city. This crowded
space—in a botanical garden’s visitor centre—is not merely a utility
room. It’s a 21st-century transformation engine.